or Constance, a very good marriage, indeed. Even papa
must acknowledge that. Money, position, age, everything of that kind,
in its favour. One could not expect to have all that without some
make-weight. I should not regret it, for I feel it might really be bad
for Connie to have so much without some make-weight. And I remarked
yesterday--I could not help remarking it--that she was very much
occupied about Sir Richard Calmady."

"Connie is a little goose," Mr. Quayle permitted himself to remark, and
for once there was quite a sour edge to his sweetness.

"Connie is not quick, she is not sensitive," his sister continued.
"And, really, under all the circumstances, that perhaps is just as
well. But she is a good child, and would believe almost anything you
told her. She has an affectionate and obedient disposition, and she
never attempts to think for herself. I don't believe it would ever
occur to her to object to his--his peculiarities, unless some
mischievous person suggested it to her. And then, as I tell you, I
remarked she was very much occupied about him."

Once again Mr. Quayle sought counsel of the landscape which once again
had changed in character. For here civilisation began to trail her
skirts very visibly, and the edges of those skirts were torn and
frayed, notably unhandsome. The open moorland had given place to flat
market-gardens and leafless orchards sloppy with wet. Innumerable
cabbages, innumerable stunted, black-branched apple and pear trees,
avenues of dilapidated pea and bean sticks, reeled away to right and
left. The semi-suburban towns stretched forth long, rawly-red arms of
ugly, little, jerry-built streets and terraces. Tall chimneys and
unlovely gasometers--these last showing as collections of some
monstrous spawn--rose against the opaque sky, a sky rendered
momentarily more opaque, dirtier and more dingy, by the masses of
London smoke hanging along the eastern horizon.

Usually Ludovic knew his own mind clearly enough. The atmosphere of it
was very far from being hazy. Now that atmosphere bore annoying
resemblance to the opacity obtaining overhead and along the eastern
horizon. The young man's sympathies--or were they his prejudices?--had
a convenient habit of ranging themselves immediately on one side or
other of any question presenting itself to him. But in the present case
they were mixed. They pulled both ways, and this vexed him. For he
liked to suppose himself very ripe, cynical, and di